State prison system needs correcting

Alaska desperately needs to reform its correctional system.

It’s only been a year since the state hailed the opening of its newest prison, the $240 million, 1,536-bed Goose Creek Correctional Center at Point MacKenzie. It’s a state-of-the-art facility that has helped relieve some of the enormous stress on our state’s correctional system. With the new prison, we’ve been able to bring home inmates who had been in prisons out to other states because we simply didn’t have the room to house them all.

Unless something is done systemically to change the way we deal with those who offend, by 2016, those 1,536 beds will be filled and Alaska will need to pony up another $250 million for another prison.

Then another, and eventually another, then still another.

While where to house our rapidly growing prison population is a problem, a larger one becomes apparent when we examine where these prisoners are coming from. Turns out, more often than not, they’re coming from prison.

That’s right, a 2011 Alaska Judicial Council study shows that there is a revolving door into our prisons; 66 percent of inmates released, re-offend within three years.

This shockingly high recidivism rate is why Alaska lawmakers are turning to states like Texas for ideas in our corrections reform effort. Faced with a prison population that was projected to grow by 17,000 prisoners by 2012, Texas began looking for solutions that didn’t include building more prisons.

Former Texas Rep. Jerry Madden, who helped lead that reform, was in Wasilla last week to give some advice to the Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee. Madden said what they found in Texas is they already had the programs and means in place to reduce recidivism. What they needed was to identify the programs that worked best and invest resources in those programs.

Imagine that, a government initiative to spend wisely that actually works.

And it does work. Since 2000, Texas has reduced its recidivism rate by 22 percent, and other states are following suit. Using that same method, Michigan has reduced its recidivism rate by 18 percent, Kansas by 15 percent and Ohio by 11 percent.

This can work here, and we’re pleased to see the Joint Judiciary Committee working toward forward-thinking solutions that move beyond just building more prisons and throwing piles of money at a system that ultimately isn’t working to keep criminals from re-offending.

The first step comes this next session when the Legislature will debate the merits of Senate Bill 64, which will create a Sentencing Committee that will be tasked with gathering hard data on all the programs in the state correctional system.

This is reform we needed to begin a decade ago, and we urge our local lawmakers to take a long, hard look at this problem and pass legislation that models a proactive approach like those used in Texas, Michigan and Kansas. If we don’t, we will once again find ourselves again contracting with other states to help house our prison overflow.